Tuesday 21 February: THE LUDWICK ARMS, WELWYN GARDEN CITY (Mike Horsman, Elvis Pile)
COMMENT: A small turnout for quite a reasonable pub, decent cheap food and beer. It's too new to appear in any of my reference books, being a 1950s pub- a "never had it so good" pub you might say, though its hard to imagine the semi-aristocratic, Jane Austen-reading 1950s Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, feeling very much at home there. The imagination reels at the idea of Supermac popping in to see the football (its a sports pub) or to listen to a gig (its a music venue). On the other hand Supermac might have quite enjoyed chatting to the little girl running around the pub who had come in for a pub lunch with Mum and Grandpa. Macmillan was good with children. I read a marvellous story about him told by his niece by marriage, the present Duchess of Devonshire. Apparently Macmillan visited Chatsworth for Christmas when his government was in dire straits (Profumo scandal etc) and by mistake was put at the dinner table between two of his great-nephews, aged ten and eight. The boys didn't know quite what to say to the elderly statesman, then one of them had an idea. "I say, Uncle Harold, I read in Old Moore's Almanac that your government is going down in six months! What do you think?"" Supermac looked at him severely; the dinner table fell silent, and after a long, long pause he replied:
"I think that's probably about right.".
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